This image was downloaded from the film’s Facebook page and is being used here for representation purpose. No copyright infringement intended.

For some time now, Malayalam films have played around with new topics, engaging characters and different styles of narration.

Still I wasn’t sure how I would weather C U Soon, despite the 2020 movie being repeatedly recommended by a good friend. I had heard of its narrative style dominated by computer and mobile phone screens and its largely indoor ambiance. None of this works with me. It’s the sort of blend that triggers a mental claustrophobia. Not to mention, I would be watching it in COVID-19 times after months of being confined to one’s apartment and the immediate neighborhood. Would I want the same restricted ambiance and submergence of life in things digital, served up on screen for my entertainment too? Paradoxical as that may seem, it sums up life over the past several months. If there is anything I want, it is to get out and magically go back to the life I once had.

So it was with much trepidation that I got around to sampling C U Soon one day. As it happened – I watched it in one go. It held my attention. The idiom worked – it was something I didn’t expect; the experience left me amazed. In retrospect, I think it was the novelty of the format, a plot good enough to sustain viewing and a particularly good performance by Darshana Rajendran with Fahadh Faasil, Roshan Mathew and Amalda Liz anchoring the rest that did the trick. It was a taut film with little flab; it sped along under its own steam.

Wikipedia provides the production timeline of the film, described as India’s first “ computer screen film.’’ According to it, in June 2020 Mahesh Narayanan (he wrote the film’s screenplay) announced that his next venture would be an experimental film. The movie would be shot on a mobile phone and the location would be an apartment. Filming was completed in August; the film released on Amazon Prime in September. It is thus very much a child of pandemic and the progressively relaxing phase of lockdown; a milestone of sorts in domestic film making, I would imagine.

That’s more than one reason to see it.

(The author, Shyam G Menon, is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai.)